Farnham’s Freehold from Robert A Heinlein has upset me a little. Robert Heinlein finds it very hard to be uncontroversial I guess. He apparently wrote every book with a mission to show a different and not necessarily beautiful facet of this world.
It says on the cover of this book that it is science-fiction’s ‘Most controversial novel’. Most controversial? I don’t think it deserves that title, there have been others with more dangerous themes. But it certainly would have been very controversial in the 60s when it was written. But I think it was controversial for all the wrong reasons.
Back in the 60s when the black people of America had only just gained a better standing in the society, a novel like Farnham’s Freehold which turns racism head-over-heels would certainly cause a ruckus. After all which white person could come to terms with a society of black rulers who have mindless white slaves who they consider animals and have doctors called ‘vets’ to treat them. Heinlein’s concoction was a slap on the face to white-supremacists. It was a mirror of the most ugly sorts showing them what they were by exaggerating the treatment they mete out to blacks, only this time the recipients were white.
So it was controversial and it had more than a few people fuming and damning. But that’s not what got my goose. Living in India and in this millennia, I am a bit immune to color-racism, but living in India there is a different picture of family that I have. I think people totally missed that point. They totally didn’t bring family into picture when they struck up a controversy. The family portrayed in Heinlein’s book is more than dysfunctional, it’s a victim. It’s a victim of an overbearing, ego-maniacal, paranoid father figure who apparently doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the people in the family even though he pretends to think that he does. That guy is also the book’s protagonist.
Only in a Heinlein book can a protagonist be so vile, disgusting, selfish, uncaring, and totally get away with it. I didn’t feel much sympathy for the lead in the novel at all even though Heinlein made an effort to make him seem fair and just in many places. But that’s a useless sort of a complain, because why should anyone expect any lead character of any book to be a moral example?
Leaving the characters be, the most interesting aspect of the book is how it compares the contemporary civilization with a possible future, and how the customs and rituals of the imaginary civilization seem so horrific while our own savage and unfair practices can be easily ignored.
Going back two thousand years we are appalled at the savagery of human civilization. Heinlein makes you appalled at the savagery two thousand years on, while the people in the future of Heinlein’s book are just as appalled at ours.
अरे महराज, आप तो बड़े धुरन्धर निकले ! तसल्ली से पिछ्ली सभी पढ़नी पड़ेंगी।
One controversial aspect of this book was the protagonist who, if you read many other Heinlein books, is clearly Heinlein himself, thinking that’s the way things should be run. See Time Enough for Love, The Tale of the Adopted Daughter.
I’ve read Time Enough for Love. Yes, I do agree that in many of Heinlein’s book there is a character that clearly represents Heinlein himself. It’s an interesting insight into the the way the author views the world and himself.
Heinlein is never uncontroversial, not even in the tamest of his books.